Design firm Needbased has recently completed a home in New Mexico, which has achieved both the Passive House Certification as well as meet the highest National Association of House Builders (NAHB) green building standard. Taoshouse, as the home is called, is therefore one of a very US homes few to obtain the certification given out by the Passive House Institute in Germany. This home will also run only on the electricity harvested from the sun.

This beautiful and sustainable home is located in the middle of a lychee garden in China. It was designed and built by the UK furniture design company Timothy Oulton. The dome was constructed using FSC-certified and reclaimed wood and serves as a relaxing retreat for the brand’s designers wishing to escape the hectic city life and replenish their creative stores surrounded by nature.

More and more young people are choosing careers over marriage and kids, and moving to urban areas to follow jobs. And across the globe, the main problems with this are the rents and lack of living space. To try and solve this problem, the Spanish architecture firm TallerDE2 designed The Pop-Up House, which is basically a set of modular units designed to make a fully functional home out of any empty room or apartment.

Finding and using alternative energy sources is quickly becoming a must and one obstacle to overcome is how to make solar panels easier to incorporate into building projects. This, of course, involves making them look pretty. VTT Technical Centre of Finland has gone a step further in this. They have come up with a method that allows for the printing of decorative graphics and functional components onto flexible organic solar panels.

Heirloom, the Oregon-based tiny homemaker recently unveiled a new offering in their line up. Their newest tiny home has off-the-grid capabilities, a clever and spacious interior layout, and a state-of-the-art automated house control system, which can be operated via an iOS or Android smartphone and will be launched soon. Read more »